Contents
I. Overview
II. The House of the Holy
III. Tome of Shadow
IV. Patience.. Discipline
V. Strengths and Weaknesses

I. Overview

When World of Warcraft first put in the description of the Priest class, I was thrilled. Clearly, they were expecting your average Cleric to be more than meets the eye, and they are. These traditional healers walk the line between light and shadow, turning to both for the better good of their race. Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, Trolls, and Undead can choose the path of the Priest, and therefore be well versed in the art of being the "heart" of their allegiances. Priests shape their success, or lead their demise, whatever the situation. Here's the official word on the class:

Priests guide the spiritual destiny of their people. Through their unique insight into the mind, they are able to shape an individual's belief, whether to inspire, soothe or dominate, heal or harm. Just as a heart can hold both darkness and light, Priests weild power of creation and devastation by channeling the potent forces underlying faith.

Wearing only Cloth Armor, Priests utilize Mana Points, like all other casters to deal and heal damage. They have three different alignments of spells - Discipline, Holy, and Shadow. Discipline is the utility field, often holding some of the most important and the most fun spells of the Priest that clearly make them shine and be unique. Holy weilds Smite, a 2.5 second cast Damage Spell, along with Healing. Shadow is pure power, housing one of the most deadliest spells in the game, making it certainly attractive to young Priests for leveling and questing.

II. The House of the Holy

Its rather simple; the only reason a group wants a Priest is their ability to effectively heal individual and multiple targets with stunning efficiency. If a Priest wants to specialize in something they are already so considerable in, they can choose to go the Holy talent line, and upgrade their heals to be almost 50% more effective than they already are. Although a more in-depth spell structure is available, here is just a basic summary of some of the spells a Priest weilds in the Holy field.

Besides a few spells, Shadow houses just about all of the Priest's damage spells. They include DoT(Damage-over-time), DD(Direct Damage), Channelled and more. With the addition of Shadow talents, a Priest fills up their Shadow spellbook rather fast, increasing their damage output considerably. Shadow Priests are masters of single target damage dealing, and can hold their own very well in PvP and PvE. It should be noted that going towards Shadow does not hinder your ability to heal. The Holy line is to amplify the already efficient heals. Shadow works the same way for damage. Although a more in-depth spell structure is available, here is just a basic summary of some of the spells a Priest weilds in the Shadow line.

Psychic Scream - Instant Cast - 30 Second Cooldown - Low Mana Cost
*Causes X targets to run in fear of the Caster for 7 seconds unless it breaks. While feared, they are unable to react

IV. Patience.. Discipline

The Discipline spellbook carries your everyday use spells, and the not-so-everyday ones too. Priests can innately hover over the ground and water, call upon souls to protect their bodies, destroy mana, bind Undead in holy shackles, and more! Specializing in the Discipline tree adds mostly passive abilities to the general Priest, allowing the class to become more versatile. It also may allow Priests to recover 15% of their Spirit while they are casting, making the tree very attractive to end-game healers and those who always wanted to rack up Spirit as their primary stat. Although a more in-depth spell structure is available, here is just a basic summary of some of the spells a Priest carries in their Discipline spellbook.

This game is built on a simple Rock-Paper-Scissors rule - where rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, and paper beats rock - and then expanded by the diversity of classes. However this fact holds true, it just means a Warrior has a general edge over any Priest, but it does not mean that the Warrior will always beat the Priest. It boils down to the skill behind the player, and if you are a good Priest, you will find yourself be avoiding certain death rather easily from classes that have a built-in edge over you. If you reach that point, bravo!

According to the Rock-Paper-Scissors rule earlier mentioned, lets assume the Priest is a "Healer" in the triangle of the former, Warrior, and Caster. Casters can be classified as Warlocks and Mages in general. "In general" meaning that, a Shadow Priest and a Balance Druid is not a Healer but a Caster, and that a Holy Paladin is a Healer. The list goes on. With that out of the way, the Warrior is rock, the Healer is Scissors, and the Caster is Paper. Healers beat Casters, Casters beat Warriors, Warriors beat Healers.